As if the weather in England isn't cold enough, myself and my husband are surprising our girls on Christmas Day with a holiday to Lapland for a week on Boxing Day. Thoroughly excited but nervous about how to entertain the children once out of the snow, I set about downloading lots of things from iTunes onto the iPad. Once I was happy that they had a few films to watch when they are in need of thawing out, I thought I would treat myself to some new songs. It's not often I download things for myself and usually get them for the children instead, but I figured it would be lovely to have some Christmas music playing on an evening.

After scouring iTunes, I quickly realised that quite a high proportion of the Christmas albums available for download are actually rip off songs! Well known and popular Christmas songs, but sung by generic artists and not the actual original song. For some people I would imagine this isn't a problem but for me was a big no no and I soon made my way back to the first album that I had looked which was the 'Now That's What I Call Christmas'. We have all of the Now CD's over recent years as they are full of tracks which my young girls know and on long car journeys they are often a life saver. It's also a nice little tradition to get my girls into as I can remember being a young girl collecting the tapes!

The thing that I specifically liked about this album is its value. The CD is a 3 disc set, and the downloaded tracks equal 63 songs in total. At only £9.99 to download I find this unbeatable value. The tracks are nearly all well-known Christmas songs and it's nice to be able to sing along to songs that are so well known. There is the odd pretty bad song such as Kylie's 'Santa Baby', sorry Kylie, it's not really up there with The Pogues or Band Aid in terms of classic Christmas songs!

It is nice to hear some songs though that although are popular Christmas ones, always seem to be overshadowed by the heavy hitters. For me, Greg Lakes 'I believe in Christmas' and Chris De Burgh's 'A Spaceman Came Travelling' are just as good as the more popular ones which seem to incessantly hit us in ever shop, TV channel, advert etc. (not blaming you Mud, it's not your fault!). The discs do seem to have a bit of a theme going on, although if you download the album you perhaps wouldn't notice this so much, but on the first disc there seems to be a lot of the 80's Christmas songs such as Slade, Band Aid and John Lennon. CD 2 seems to offer a more classic 'crooners' CD (cringing at that word - couldn't think of any other way to describe it, sorry!) with the likes of Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley and Andy Williams at the beginning swiftly turning into later songs on disc 3 to Il Divo, East 17 and Band Aid 20. My favourite set of songs seem to be on disc 1 with my least favourite on disc 3 and to be honest this is probably intentional. The makers aren't going to put their best songs on the last few tracks of disc 3. As a whole the album is really good mix of new and old. I could happily listen to these songs on random play and be happily singing to East 17 one minute and The Pogues the next! There is the odd 'skip me' track but these are few and far between making it a really good value Christmas album.

One major plus for me is, although this album will only really get played once a year for about a month, the songs don't really age so this album will last me many years to come, and will possibly only need to be added to with the odd single song downloaded (although I can't remember the last time a Christmas song was released and was any good). Also, if you download the album rather than buy the CD, it won't scratch! I had to throw last year's Christmas album away as it was really scratched!

I don't normally like listing all the specifics in a review (such as ingredients lol), but think for a CD it's important to know what you would get for your money (my ideal Christmas songs may be your worst nightmare!), so I have included the song list of all 3 CD's below (feel free to skip this if of no interest, I won't be offended!).

CD 1

1 Happy Xmas (War Is Over) John & Yoko And The Plastic Ono Band With The Harlem Community Choir
2 Fairytale Of New York The Pogues feat. Kirsty MacColl
3 Last Christmas Wham!
4 I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday Wizzard
5 Merry Xmas Everybody Slade
6 Driving Home For Christmas Chris Rea
7 Do They Know It's Christmas? Band Aid
8 I Believe In Father Christmas Greg Lake
9 Mistletoe And Wine Cliff Richard
10 Lonely This Christmas Mud
11 Mary's Boy Child / Oh My Lord Boney M
12 Stop The Cavalry Jona Lewie
13 Merry Christmas Everyone Shakin' Stevens
14 Step Into Christmas Elton John
15 Not Tonight Santa Girls Aloud
16 Wonderful Christmas Time Paul McCartney
17 2000 Miles Pretenders
18 The Power Of Love Frankie Goes To Hollywood
19 Christmas Lights Coldplay
20 Peace On Earth/Little Drummer Boy Bing Crosby & David Bowie

CD 2

21 Blue Christmas Elvis Presley
22 White Christmas Bing Crosby
23 It's The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year Andy Williams
24 Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Dean Martin
25 The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas To You) Nat King Cole Trio
26 Winter Wonderland Doris Day
27 Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas Frank Sinatra
28 Santa Claus Is Coming To Town The Crystals
29 Sleigh Ride The Ronettes
30 Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree Brenda Lee
31Frosty The Snowman The Jackson 5
32 Never Do a Tango With An Eskimo Alma Cogan
33 Santa Baby Kylie Minogue
34 I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus The Ronettes
35 Rudolph The Red The Crystals
36 Little Saint Nick The Beach Boys
37 Lonely Pup (In A Christmas Shop) Adam Faith
38 Baby, It's Cold Outside Dean Martin
39 Silver Bells Jim Reeves
40 O Little Town of Bethlehem Burl Ives
41 The Little Boy That Santa Claus Forgot Nat King Cole
42 I'll Be Home For Christmas (If Only In My Dream) Frank Sinatra

CD 3

43 When A Child Is Born Johnny Mathis
44 A Spaceman Came Travelling Chris De Burgh
45 O Holy Night Il Divo
46 Silent Night Sinéad O'Connor
47 In The Bleak Mid Winter Bert Jansch
48 Gaudete Steeleye Span
49 In Dulci Jubilo Mike Oldfield
50 Saviour's Day Cliff Richard
51 Walking In The Air Aled Jones
52 A Winter's Tale David Essex
53 Stay Another Day East 17
54 December Song (I Dreamed Of Christmas) George Michael
55 All I Want For Christmas Is You Lady Antebellum
56 Happy This Christmas Mick Hucknall
57 Ring Out Solstice Bells Jethro Tull
58 Christmas Wrapping The Waitresses
59 Do They Know It's Christmas? Band Aid 20
60 We Wish You A Merry Christmas The Weavers
61 The Twelve Days Of Christmas The Spinners
62 Auld Lang Syne Andy Stewart
63 Happy New Year Abba